On the 18th January 2017, we entered the new year with a CARP Talk. The title of the talk was ‘Is goal setting enough?’. A perfect sounding topic for the new year as many of us start making resolutions for the year. The title may even sound cliché to some, but as the talk began the saying came to mind “don’t judge a book by its cover”. Giving the first talk of 2017 was CARP’s very own Events Manager, Hitomi Endo Mingala. Hitomi studies Korean language at SOAS university, London and became a CARP member in 2016.

Our MC, Jeungsun

Hitomi started her talk by posing the question: “Why do we set goals?”. One answer was to become better people, which of course is true. Hitomi moved on to explain her thoughts on why people set goals; saying that we set them in order to be happy and have better relationships. This idea touched on the essence of goal setting and is vastly overlooked when we find reasons for goal setting, right! Hitomi then related her point to the Divine Principle “Once our desires are fulfilled, we experience joy and we feel happy.”

So why do we want to become better people? We want to have better relationships with people.

Our lives revolve around relationships the things that we want (large homes and nice cars) are often so we can share with the other people. Particularly the people we love. The example Hitomi used was of her current experience of being on a teacher training course, teaching GCSE students Maths. She told us that they are taught to teach students, not to only make sure they get passing grades but to also care about their students “I want to be a good teacher, not for myself, but for the students.”

Guests introducing themeslves

The relationship quantity is not what makes us happier people, it’s the quality of the relationship.

Hitomi mentioned CARP’s main aim which is to learn about what true relationships are.

Hitomi asked this to one of her students she was speaking with and said that he had replied saying that to build true relationships, we need to invest in them. Although this seemed like an obvious point.

Hitomi started to close her talk with the effect of our reactions when we don’t achieve the goals that we have set. We may not feel the joy that we anticipated that we would feel, but feel more disheartened. This is all too often the results we get when we don’t reach our goals. Maybe this suggests that being motivated to set goals is just as important as the end results we get.

“…instead of focusing on the end result that we can’t control, we should focus on putting in the effort.”

The crowd

What goals has everyone set for 2017?

With enough effort, you can reach them and bring joy to your own lives and to those you love the most!